One of the most important services that Norid operates is completely invisible until it no longer works: the name service for the Norwegian top-level domain .no. Norid is now entering into a valuable new collaboration with our colleagues in Denmark to operate name servers for each other across Scandinavia.

The name service is necessary for domain names ending in .no to work technically, and is thus part of the basic internet infrastructure. Around the world, there are many different machines (name servers) that respond to lookups in the global domain name system. This system ensures that when you enter a domain name in your browser, the browser receives the IP address of the server where the content is stored.

Norid has now entered into an agreement with our neighbours in Denmark, Punktum dk, to strengthen the robustness of our name services. The agreement is that we at Norid will run a name server for Punktum dk, and they will run one for us. This is a small contribution to the diversity of name servers that is the basis for .no to work.

This Scandinavian collaboration on one of our most important services shows how valuable good neighbourhoods can be. Together we become stronger!

In order to access content or other services on the internet, the user's computer must know the IP address of the server on which the content is stored or the service is provided. This address is retrieved by lookup in the global domain name system.

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Published: 2 June 2026